NEWS,30.07.2013

Egyptian exports start to boom

Egypt is in the early stages of an export boom, suggesting its economy could begin to recover in the next few months if a minimum level of political stability is restored.
Helped by a falling Egyptian pound, non-oil exports have grown at double-digit annual rates since early this year despite violence on the streets and deep uncertainty over the country's political future.
Egypt's export sector accounts for only slightly more than 10% of the overall economy, and this relatively modest contribution cannot by itself end high unemployment or generate enough tax revenue to fix the government's shattered finances.
But the surge in exports, which has received little publicity amid this year's flood of bad economic news from Egypt, shows many manufacturers are finding ways to ride out the political turbulence - and could enjoy strong growth if the country eventually gets a stable government.
"It's a good sign if they're managing to achieve that kind of export growth, especially in the current environment," said John Sfakianakis, chief investment strategist at MASIC, a Riyadh-based investment firm.
Overall Egypt still runs a huge merchandise trade deficit, which was $23.8bn in the financial year to March, although this was already 2.7% narrower than in 2011-12 as exports grew and imports remained steady.
In the separate energy sector, which accounts for about a fifth of overall exports, Egypt has sharply cut back natural gas shipments, diverting supplies to the domestic market to avoid power shortages.
Recovery
Egypt's non-oil exports grew strongly for much of the past decade, rising 18.5% to $18.6bn in 2011, the year when Hosni Mubarak was overthrown, according to the State Information Service.
Their growth plunged last year as the election of Islamist president Mohamed Mursi worsened political tensions and deterred investment; industrial unrest, poor security, fuel shortages and difficulties obtaining finance hit many companies.
Non-oil exports inched up just 2% in 2012, less than half the rate of consumer price inflation. But shipments began to recover around the start of this year, rising 7% from a year earlier in the first two months of 2013.
Trade minister Mounir Fakhry Abdel Nour told reporters that non-oil exports jumped 21% year-on-year in June, a month when big Egyptian cities were rocked by mass protests against Mursi that led to his overthrow by the army on July 3.
In many ways, the operating environment for Egyptian companies has remained as tough as it was last year. But exports of low-technology, cost-sensitive products such as textiles, food and leather have jumped, businessmen say.
Textile exports rose 16.5% from a year ago, according to the Textile Export Council. Processed food exports climbed 26% year-on-year in the month of May alone, and were nearly twice their level in May 2010.
A major reason for the export recovery is the depreciation of the Egyptian pound, which makes shipments more competitive. Depreciation accelerated in the first half of this year.
There are also signs that some Egyptian exporters are starting to tap fast-growing demand in markets beyond Europe and the Arab world, their traditional focuses.
Non-oil exports to non-Arab African countries surged 28% from a year earlier in the first five months of this year. Exports to the Arab world climbed 20%, helped by an economic recovery in neighbouring Libya after its civil war.

Bulgaria set to slash electricity prices

Bulgaria's energy watchdog says it will lower electricity prices by up to five percent starting on Thursday, in a new bid to appease protesters calling for the government to step down.
The DKEVR state energy regulatory commission late on Monday approved the price cut, which will come into effect on August 1, as the EU's poorest country continues to struggle against high bills, the commission said.
Last winter, high electricity bills sparked mass street protests against low living standards, growing poverty and unemployment, forcing out the previous conservative cabinet.
New protest rallies have called for the resignation of current technocrat Prime Minister Plamen Oresharski in office only since May.
To appease public anger, Oresharski's government has passed a package of social measures but the daily protests have continued for the 47th day on Tuesday and the electricity price cut was not expected to put an end to them.
Bulgarians pay about eight cents per kilowatt hour of electricity half of what consumers in wealthier EU countries pay their power utilities.
But incomes in the Balkan country are also just a fraction of the rest of the bloc, with monthly salaries averaging about €400  ($530) and pensions at €138.
Slumping household consumption and meagre exports contributed to an overheating energy production sector this year, prompting authorities to curtail output, while deals on expensive green energy prevented utilities from lowering costs for consumers.
Under the new move, all clients of the three power utilities Austrian EVN, Czech CEZ and Energo-Pro will see daytime electricity costs reduced by up five percent and nighttime costs by up to about seven percent.

Spain's economy close to leveling off

Spain's economy all but emerged from a two-year slump in the second quarter but its recovery looks fragile at best, given weak consumer demand and a simmering political scandal at home and faltering growth abroad.
Gross domestic product shrank 0.1% between April and June from the previous quarter, according to Tuesday's data from state statistics agency INE, which matched a Bank of Spain estimate given last week as well as market forecasts.
Between January and March the economy shrank 0.5%.
Given the signs of an upturn in economic activity, also including the first drop in unemployment in two years in the second quarter, Economy Minister Luis de Guindos has called an end to Spain's recession.
Many economists are not convinced.
"We're not counting on a further improvement in the third quarter and are very sceptical of any statement that the recession in close to being over," Ebrahim Rahbari, an analyst at Citi in London, said.
Spain's economy has been in and out of recession since 2008, when a burst property bubble undermined the foundations of one of the country's key pillars of growth, construction.
That sent unemployment to record highs, depressing business and saddling the banking system with billions of euros of soured real estate assets and loans.
Spain's biggest bank Santander SA, which insulated itself against the worst of the market meltdown by expanding its already dominant foreign operations, said on Tuesday half year group profits rose 29% on lower loan losses.
It said operating earnings were hit by the sluggish Spanish economy but also offered hope the impact of the property slump on the government and lenders - bailed out last year with €42bn of European aid - might be easing.
It said provisions against loan losses which many Spanish banks booked heavily in 2012 - dropped sharply, and that it might consider buying nationalised banks Catalunya Banc or NCG Banco if they came up for sale.
Temporary respite
Since 2008, already subdued domestic demand has been knocked back further by tax hikes and spending cuts aimed at balancing a budget which has one of the largest shortfalls in the eurozone.
Growth-friendlier policies have played a bigger role in Europe's economic debate in recent months as austerity has lost its lustre, but Spain's still high fiscal imbalances mean more budget cuts will have to be made, potentially hitting the tentative signs of recovery.
Meanwhile, allegations of millions of euros being filtered illegally to ruling party leaders, including Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, has helped half the conservatives' approval rating putting them level with the opposition Socialists.
That has added an element of political instability that carries faint, but nonetheless unwelcome, echoes of events in fellow euro zone struggler Italy, where a shaky coalition government could fall if former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi loses a supreme court appeal hearing that began on Tuesday.
But the centre-right People's Party of Rajoy, who has denied wrongdoing, has a strong majority in parliament and unless new evidence ties him directly to the scandal, he is expected to remain in power.
Rajoy, along with his economy minister, has recently done his best to talk up the economy, and the second quarter also saw the first drop in unemployment in two years, to 26.3%.
But that lower figure still more than double the euro zone average was largely due to temporary factors especially strong trade data, which includes seasonal tourism.
Spanish retail sales due on Wednesday are expected to show high-street spending has shrunk every month for three years.
Spain's high reliance on activity beyond its borders exports rose to a third of economic activity in the first quarter adds uncertainty to the outlook amid a shaky global recovery and enduring weakness in Europe, where around 70 percent of Spain's exports are sold.
Martin van Vliet, analyst at ING, said he expected Spain's economy to flatline and then gradually return to growth in the first half of next year. "But the pace of growth will probably be too slow to create jobs, which is a prerequisite to embark on a self-sustaining recovery," he said. 

NEWS,29.07.2013

Amazon hiring thousands of people

Amazon announced plans Monday to add 5 000 full-time jobs at 17 facilities in the United States and to hire more than 7 000 workers as it beefs up its customer-service network.
The online retail giant is creating jobs as it expands its distribution network to speed up deliveries. The facilities in 10 states across the country, from South Carolina to California.
Amazon said that more than 5 000 jobs were now available across its warehouse network, touting pay that is 30% higher than that of traditional retail stores.
"In the last year alone, Amazon opened eight fulfillment centers in the US, resulting in thousands of new jobs being added to communities nationwide," the company said in a statement.
The Seattle-based retailer also said it was currently hiring in four states for more than 2 000 jobs in its customer service network, which includes a mix of full-time, part-time and seasonal jobs.
Amazon shares fell 0.9% in morning trade in New York.

China agrees to talks on wine dispute

China and the European Union have agreed there is a "window for discussions" to try to resolve accusations that Europe is dumping wine in China, the EU's trade chief said on Monday.
The agreement is part of a deal announced at the weekend to defuse a row over dumping of Chinese solar panels in Europe, the biggest trade dispute yet between the two economies.
Responding to the EU's initial plan to impose punitive duties on solar panels, China launched an anti-dumping inquiry into European wine sales, which would lead to retaliatory duties on exporters in France, Spain and Italy.
"There is a window for discussions between the European Union and Chinese (wine) producers," EU Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht told a news conference. "The Chinese government has promised to facilitate such discussions," he said.
EU and Chinese diplomats expect the wine dispute, as well as another conflict over EU exports of polysilicon a raw material for solar panels to be dropped as a goodwill gesture.
China is the world's biggest importer of Bordeaux wines and consumption soared 110% in 2011 alone.
China's commerce ministry could not confirm any freeze to the EU wine investigation, the website associated with the Communist Party mouthpiece the People's Daily reported on Monday, citing an unnamed official.
A lawyer representing the Chinese industry association that filed the wine complaint said the firm had not received any notice on the freezing of the probe, the website www.people.com.cn said.
"The relevant investigation is still proceeding regularly," Yao Fengwen, a lawyer with Bo Heng (Beijing B&H Associates) law firm, told the site.
Germany's Wacker Chemie is the world's second biggest maker of polysilicon and would be hurt by any tariffs in China.

Foreign firms win $22.5bn Saudi contracts

Saudi Arabia has granted three foreign consortium's contracts worth $22.5bn (€16.9bn) to build a Riyadh metro, the kingdom announced at a news conference in the capital late Sunday.
The consortiums are led by US, Spanish and Italian firms.
The 176-kilometre (110-mile) six-line network is aimed at easing chronic traffic congestion in Riyadh, a city of six million people.
A consortium led by US engineering giant Bechtel Corp will construct two lines worth $9.45bn, the official SPA news agency reported.
Spanish BTP-FCC consortium will build three of the metro lines for $7.88bn, after it beat competition from South Korea's Samsung, France's Alstom and Freyssinet, and Dutch group Strukton to secure the deal.
Another line costing $5.21bn went to Italy's Ansaldo.
The lines are planned to stretch across the capital and serve the airport and the future King Abdullah Financial District.
Oil-rich Saudi Arabia also plans to invest billions of dollars in rail networks linking major cities across the vast desert kingdom.
The kingdom already has a 449-kilometre passenger line between Riyadh and Dammam in Eastern Province, with a parallel freight line linking the capital with the Gulf coast city.

Focus on emerging markets

Fickle investors have spurned emerging markets in recent weeks, but this route has obscured a more alluring vista out on the horizon.

Developing economies now account for 50% of global output and 80% of economic expansion, and are projected to continue growing far faster than developed nations. They are expected to possess an even larger share of global growth, wealth and investment opportunities in years to come.
So much so that the labels investors use to classify some of these nations will change as the developing develop and the emerging emerge into more potent economic powers.
But this long-term view has been lost on many of those who look to emerging market assets for a higher yield in the short term. Their ardour cooled when the Federal Reserve signalled it may soon ease the stimulus that has kept credit cheap, heralding higher interest rates ahead.
That was coupled with signs of slower growth in key emerging markets like China and Brazil.
Still, the developing world's gross domestic product growth of 5.0% this year and 5.4% next, as projected by the International Monetary Fund, will far outpace the advanced economies' 1.2% and 2.1%.
Developing countries are now also better armed to keep panic at bay, with more foreign exchange reserves than before and less aggregate debt than developed nations. Many have put their economies on firmer foundations.
Fear of a mass exodus of investors, however, has still sent emerging market shares down about 10% in the past two months, as measured by the MSCI Emerging Markets Index, compared with a marginal rise in the Standard & Poor's index of US shares.
Consider some other data that the World Bank has crunched, suggesting developing nations will attract increased capital flows because their growth implies big investment opportunities, improved creditworthiness and the ability to better diversify portfolios and manage risk.
According to one bank report, by 2030 developing countries will represent two-thirds of all global investment, up from about half today and from one-fifth in 2000.
At that time, half the global stock of capital is expected to reside in the developing world, compared to less than one-third today. That means a shift in the distribution of wealth and in the creation of opportunity.
This shift in investment activity coincides with the catch-up growth that began during the 1990s, as developing nations integrated into global markets, transformed their economies and improved their institutions, Hans Timmer, director of the World Bank team that produced the report, said.
"Productivity catch-up, increasing integration into global markets, sound macroeconomic policies and improved education and health are helping speed growth and create massive investment opportunities, which, in turn are spurring a shift in global economic weight to developing countries," the report said.
And to be clear, this is investment in buildings and machinery, not the more flighty financial flows.
The Bric nations (Brazil, Russia, India and China) are expected to loom large. China will make up 30% of all investment activity, while Brazil, India and Russia together will account for more than 13% of global investment in 2030, edging the 11% projected in the United States.
But their growing importance as sources and destinations of capital flows will not be a Bric story alone, the report says. It calls out sub-Saharan Africa, for example, which can be expected to not only receive a growing volume of capital flows but also to attract an increasing share of the total capital flows to developing countries.
The bank's researchers forecast that developing countries will likely have the resources needed to finance massive future investments for infrastructure and services.
That's predicated on strong saving rates, expected to top out at 34% of national income in 2014 and averaging 32% annually until 2030. Meanwhile, the saving rate for high-income countries will fall from 20% to 16%.
In aggregate terms, the developing world will account for 62-64% of global saving of $25-27trn by 2030, up from 45% in 2010.
This points to greater wealth in the developing world as a percentage of the global total: the average per capital income of the developing world is expected to rise from about 8.0% of that in high-income countries in 2010, to about 16% by 2030.
The average citizen of what is now a developing country, according to one bank scenario, will earn 19% of the income of an average high-income country citizen by 2030.
Indeed, one McKinsey study projects more than half the world's population will have joined the consuming classes by 2025, boosting consumption in emerging markets to $30trn a year. It will, the report says, be nothing short of the "defining growth opportunity of our times".
Seizing on this theme, Bhaskar Chakravorti and Gita Rao, writing in Foreign Affairs recently, pointed to the hand-wringing over the decline of American power and urged US businesses to compete in emerging markets to help themselves grow, hire again and create wealth.
Another fan with a long lens is Mark Mobius, chairperson of the Templeton Emerging Markets Group, who wrote last month that commodities, exports and infrastructure development could continue to be leading growth drivers in many emerging economies, but overall growth is likely to arise increasingly from healthier domestic demand.
"Expanding consumer wealth is creating an increasingly large and discriminating body of middle class consumers across emerging markets, and their demand is, in turn, creating increasingly significant domestic economic activity," Mobius said. "
"With a relatively high proportion of the population in emerging markets moving into the workforce and a relatively low proportion of dependents, demographics are acting to reinforce consumer demand."
These forecasts are not unconditional. Some risks will reduce over time. Others will increase.
The countries must continue to drive increases in productivity and attract investors to finance the investments, the bank's report says.
There is also an assumption that some of markets will have addressed some of the hurdles to invest now which variously include poor governance, lax enforcement of contracts and property rights, corruption, lack of adequate infrastructure and distribution networks and uneven pipeline of talent.
In addition, as emerging economies develop, their financial markets integrate more into global ones, and they ease restrictions on capital that flows across their borders. It then  becomes more difficult to shield them from international shocks, the World Bank's Timmer said.
They can mitigate those shocks as alternatives to the dollar rise, and as they build reserves in other currencies like the euro and the yuan.
There are other challenges that concern Neil Shearing, chief emerging markets economist at Capital Economics in London. The first, already well known in China, is the need to reposition economies to be more consumer-driven and less dependent on exports.
The second is avoiding the kind of investment bubble created in the eastern European property market - which burst a few years ago.
"If the investment is in glitzy shopping malls," Shearing told me, "it can create bubbles and be dangerous. Whereas investment in China is excessive but in roads, railways and ports that you do want to look for."
Growth may slow, and challenges will abound, but the prospects loom large. And therein lies opportunity.

Gas flows from Myanmar-China pipeline

Gas has started flowing to energy-hungry China through a pipeline from Myanmar, Beijing's official media reported, in a major project that highlights their economic links even as political ties come under pressure.
The 793-kilometre (492-mile) pipeline runs from Kyaukpyu on resource-rich Myanmar's west coast, close to the offshore Shwe gasfields, and across the country.
It enters southwest China at Ruili, near areas where heavy clashes between the rebel Kachin Independence Army and the Myanmar military were reported earlier this year.
As well as diversifying China's sources of fuel, by supplying energy to the vast and less developed west it could help Beijing's attempts to promote economic growth there.
It went into operation on Sunday at a ceremony in Mandalay, the official Xinhua news agency reported. "When torches flamed in the sky.... a storm of applause and cheers broke out," it said.
But the controversial project is the fruit of Beijing's long allegiance with the military junta that ruled Myanmar for decades, a bond that is weakening as the reforming government opens up to the West.
In an editorial on Monday China's Global Times newspaper, affiliated with the ruling Communist Party, said: "This is another breakthrough in China's strategy of energy diversification and has obvious significance in reducing China's dependence on the Strait of Malacca for the import of oil and natural gas."
Construction began in June 2010, according to China National Petroleum Corporation, the key investor. A parallel oil pipeline is also part of the project.
According to Xinhua, the gas pipeline will be able to carry 12 billion cubic metres annually, while the crude oil pipeline has a capacity of 22 million tonnes per year.
Under military rule Myanmar was a pariah state largely isolated from the rest of the world and subject to heavy international sanctions, but it maintained close economic links with China, which for years was its major foreign influence.
Now, with Myanmar which also includes tin and precious gems among its natural assets opening up politically and economically, more countries are setting up operations and seeking deals that sanctions had previously prevented.
"Myanmar used to be sanctioned by the West and China was its only friend," the Global Times editorial acknowledged.
"Nowadays, it has opened more to the West. This will reduce its passion in cooperating with China, but does not mean it will set itself against China."
But in a warning that Beijing expects its economic interests to be protected, the newspaper cautioned Myanmar that it must ensure agreements regarding the project are fulfilled, no matter who eventually leads the country, where democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi has entered parliament.
"China should be determined to supervise Myanmar in doing so," the paper said. "Myanmar should hold a serious attitude toward China, and Chinese will take (the Myanmar) people's attitude toward the pipeline as a test of their stance on China."
Chinese nervousness about its investments in Myanmar comes after Naypyidaw said last week it had revised a controversial copper mine agreement with a Chinese company, after dozens of Buddhist monks and villagers were injured in a botched police raid.
Myanmar Minister of Mines Myint Aung told parliament that new terms gave the government 51% of the revenue, replacing a previous deal that was a joint venture between the Chinese firm and a holding company owned by the Myanmar military.
In 2011, Myanmar President Thein Sein stopped construction on the China-backed $3.6bn Myitsone Dam on the Irrawaddy river amid public opposition to the project, a move that led Beijing to call for its companies' rights and interests to be protected.
The Shwe Gas Movement, a campaign group, says the pipeline project has sparked protests over issues including demands for higher salaries for local workers, and concerns among farmers about its environmental impacts.
Myanmar plans to renegotiate billions of dollars of natural resource deals as it imposes tougher environmental standards and clamps down on corruption, the US-based Asia Society said in a report last month.

NEWS,28.07.2013

Pope asks youth to change world

Rio's famed Copacabana beach, usually the venue for scantily-clad sun-seekers and revelry, became a massive Catholic campground on Sunday as Pope Francis concluded a youth festival by urging young people to go forth and build a new world.
A festive crowd estimated by organisers and the Vatican to be more than 3 million strong, including many who slept in the area and local residents who poured out of homes and buses, turned out to see the Argentine pope on the final day of his week-long trip.
Aerial television footage showed the sand and pavements blanketed with people for several kilometres along the crescent-shaped shoreline.
"I was totally tranquil, waking up among the people on the beach. This view made it a very special and unique experience," said Aline Vonsovicz, a 23-year-old Brazilian of Polish origin.
The throng of people, many in the green and yellow Brazilian colours, gave Francis the kind of ecstatic welcome that he has received all through his trip to his home continent.
Work for social change
They shouted and sang as he was driven through the crowd in an open-sided popemobile, stopping often to kiss babies offered to him by their mothers on the shoreline most famous for its bars and nightclubs and hedonist spirit.
His message to the young people in Rio for week-long World Youth Day festivities, sometimes called "the Church's Woodstock", was serious: they should not make their time in Rio a one-off experience.
In his sermon during the Mass from a huge white stage at the beach's northern tip, he said they should return to their home countries energised and ready to work for social change.
"Bringing the Gospel is bringing God's power to pluck up and break down evil and violence, to destroy and overthrow the barriers of selfishness, intolerance and hatred, so as to build a new world," he said.
Latin American presidents at mass
Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, Argentine President Cristina Fernandez, Bolivian President Evo Morales and several Latin American vice presidents were among those who attended.
The Copacabana events were to have taken place on a pasture on the outskirts of Rio, but days of unseasonable rain turned the area into a field of mud.
"It was cold in the morning and there was a problem with a long wait for the toilets. Some people went in the sea. It was a bit chaotic. But it was lovely," said Marcel Stelsberg, 27, who came from Copenhagen with a group of 65 people from Scandinavia.
"People were playing guitars and drums and singing and dancing to religious songs in different languages. Now we don't feel so alone, especially coming from Scandinavia where there are so few of us Catholics," he said.
Francis, who was due to leave for Rome on Sunday night after addressing Latin American bishops, has dedicated much attention in his speeches to the problems, the prospects and the power of youth.
He announced that the next World Youth Day will be in Krakow, Poland, in 2016.
On Saturday night, he encouraged Brazil's young people, who have protested against corruption in their country, to continue their efforts to change society by fighting apathy and offering "a Christian response".
Brazil, Latin America's largest nation and still the world's most Catholic country despite declining numbers of faithful, was rocked by protests against corruption, the misuse of public money and the high cost of living.
On Friday night he urged them to change a world where food is discarded while millions go hungry, where racism and violence still affront human dignity, and where politics is more associated with corruption than service.
The day before, during a visit to a Rio slum, he urged them to not lose trust and to not allow their hopes to be extinguished. Many young people in Brazil saw this as his support for peaceful demonstrations to bring about change.

80 Percent Of U.S. Adults Face Near-Poverty, Unemployment: Survey

Four out of 5 U.S. adults struggle with joblessness, near-poverty or reliance on welfare for at least parts of their lives, a sign of deteriorating economic security and an elusive American dream.
Survey data exclusive to The Associated Press points to an increasingly globalized U.S. economy, the widening gap between rich and poor, and the loss of good-paying manufacturing jobs as reasons for the trend.
The findings come as President Barack Obama tries to renew his administration's emphasis on the economy, saying in recent speeches that his highest priority is to "rebuild ladders of opportunity" and reverse income inequality.
As nonwhites approach a numerical majority in the U.S., one question is how public programs to lift the disadvantaged should be best focused on the affirmative action that historically has tried to eliminate the racial barriers seen as the major impediment to economic equality, or simply on improving socioeconomic status for all, regardless of race.
Hardship is particularly growing among whites, based on several measures. Pessimism among that racial group about their families' economic futures has climbed to the highest point since at least 1987. In the most recent AP-GfK poll, 63 percent of whites called the economy "poor."
"I think it's going to get worse," said Irene Salyers, 52, of Buchanan County, Va., a declining coal region in Appalachia. Married and divorced three times, Salyers now helps run a fruit and vegetable stand with her boyfriend but it doesn't generate much income. They live mostly off government disability checks.
"If you do try to go apply for a job, they're not hiring people, and they're not paying that much to even go to work," she said. Children, she said, have "nothing better to do than to get on drugs."
While racial and ethnic minorities are more likely to live in poverty, race disparities in the poverty rate have narrowed substantially since the 1970s, census data show. Economic insecurity among whites also is more pervasive than is shown in the government's poverty data, engulfing more than 76 percent of white adults by the time they turn 60, according to a new economic gauge being published next year by the Oxford University Press.
The gauge defines "economic insecurity" as experiencing unemployment during the year, or a year or more of reliance on government aid such as food stamps or income below 150 percent of the poverty line. Measured across all races, the risk of economic insecurity rises to 79 percent.
Marriage rates are in decline across all races, and the number of white mother-headed households living in poverty has risen to the level of black ones.
"It's time that America comes to understand that many of the nation's biggest disparities, from education and life expectancy to poverty, are increasingly due to economic class position," said William Julius Wilson, a Harvard professor who specializes in race and poverty. He noted that despite continuing economic difficulties, minorities have more optimism about the future after Obama's election, while struggling whites do not.
"There is the real possibility that white alienation will increase if steps are not taken to highlight and address inequality on a broad front," Wilson said.
Nationwide, the count of America's poor remains stuck at a record number: 46.2 million, or 15 percent of the population, due in part to lingering high unemployment following the recession. While poverty rates for blacks and Hispanics are nearly three times higher, by absolute numbers the predominant face of the poor is white.
More than 19 million whites fall below the poverty line of $23,021 for a family of four, accounting for more than 41 percent of the nation's destitute, nearly double the number of poor blacks.
Sometimes termed "the invisible poor" by demographers, lower-income whites generally are dispersed in suburbs as well as small rural towns, where more than 60 percent of the poor are white. Concentrated in Appalachia in the East, they are numerous in the industrial Midwest and spread across America's heartland, from Missouri, Arkansas and Oklahoma up through the Great Plains.
Buchanan County, in southwest Virginia, is among the nation's most destitute based on median income, with poverty hovering at 24 percent. The county is mostly white, as are 99 percent of its poor.
More than 90 percent of Buchanan County's inhabitants are working-class whites who lack a college degree. Higher education long has been seen there as nonessential to land a job because well-paying mining and related jobs were once in plentiful supply. These days many residents get by on odd jobs and government checks.
Salyers' daughter, Renee Adams, 28, who grew up in the region, has two children. A jobless single mother, she relies on her live-in boyfriend's disability checks to get by. Salyers says it was tough raising her own children as it is for her daughter now, and doesn't even try to speculate what awaits her grandchildren, ages 4 and 5.
Smoking a cigarette in front of the produce stand, Adams later expresses a wish that employers will look past her conviction a few years ago for distributing prescription painkillers, so she can get a job and have money to "buy the kids everything they need."
"It's pretty hard," she said. "Once the bills are paid, we might have $10 to our name."
Census figures provide an official measure of poverty, but they're only a temporary snapshot that doesn't capture the makeup of those who cycle in and out of poverty at different points in their lives. They may be suburbanites, for example, or the working poor or the laid off.
In 2011 that snapshot showed 12.6 percent of adults in their prime working-age years of 25-60 lived in poverty. But measured in terms of a person's lifetime risk, a much higher number  4 in 10 adults  falls into poverty for at least a year of their lives.
The risks of poverty also have been increasing in recent decades, particularly among people ages 35-55, coinciding with widening income inequality. For instance, people ages 35-45 had a 17 percent risk of encountering poverty during the 1969-1989 time period; that risk increased to 23 percent during the 1989-2009 period. For those ages 45-55, the risk of poverty jumped from 11.8 percent to 17.7 percent.
Higher recent rates of unemployment mean the lifetime risk of experiencing economic insecurity now runs even higher: 79 percent, or 4 in 5 adults, by the time they turn 60.
By race, nonwhites still have a higher risk of being economically insecure, at 90 percent. But compared with the official poverty rate, some of the biggest jumps under the newer measure are among whites, with more than 76 percent enduring periods of joblessness, life on welfare or near-poverty.
By 2030, based on the current trend of widening income inequality, close to 85 percent of all working-age adults in the U.S. will experience bouts of economic insecurity.
"Poverty is no longer an issue of `them', it's an issue of `us'," says Mark Rank, a professor at Washington University in St. Louis who calculated the numbers. "Only when poverty is thought of as a mainstream event, rather than a fringe experience that just affects blacks and Hispanics, can we really begin to build broader support for programs that lift people in need."
The numbers come from Rank's analysis being published by the Oxford University Press. They are supplemented with interviews and figures provided to the AP by Tom Hirschl, a professor at Cornell University; John Iceland, a sociology professor at Penn State University; the University of New Hampshire's Carsey Institute; the Census Bureau; and the Population Reference Bureau.
Among the findings:
For the first time since 1975, the number of white single-mother households living in poverty with children surpassed or equaled black ones in the past decade, spurred by job losses and faster rates of out-of-wedlock births among whites. White single-mother families in poverty stood at nearly 1.5 million in 2011, comparable to the number for blacks. Hispanic single-mother families in poverty trailed at 1.2 million.
Since 2000, the poverty rate among working-class whites has grown faster than among working-class nonwhites, rising 3 percentage points to 11 percent as the recession took a bigger toll among lower-wage workers. Still, poverty among working-class nonwhites remains higher, at 23 percent.
The share of children living in high-poverty neighborhoods those with poverty rates of 30 percent or more has increased to 1 in 10, putting them at higher risk of teenage pregnancy or dropping out of school. Non-Hispanic whites accounted for 17 percent of the child population in such neighborhoods, compared with 13 percent in 2000, even though the overall proportion of white children in the U.S. has been declining.
The share of black children in high-poverty neighborhoods dropped from 43 percent to 37 percent, while the share of Latino children went from 38 percent to 39 percent.
Race disparities in health and education have narrowed generally since the 1960s. While residential segregation remains high, a typical black person now lives in a nonmajority black neighborhood for the first time. Previous studies have shown that wealth is a greater predictor of standardized test scores than race; the test-score gap between rich and low-income students is now nearly double the gap between blacks and whites.
Going back to the 1980s, never have whites been so pessimistic about their futures, according to the General Social Survey, a biannual survey conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago. Just 45 percent say their family will have a good chance of improving their economic position based on the way things are in America.
The divide is especially evident among those whites who self-identify as working class. Forty-nine percent say they think their children will do better than them, compared with 67 percent of nonwhites who consider themselves working class, even though the economic plight of minorities tends to be worse.
Although they are a shrinking group, working-class whites defined as those lacking a college degree remain the biggest demographic bloc of the working-age population. In 2012, Election Day exit polls conducted for the AP and the television networks showed working-class whites made up 36 percent of the electorate, even with a notable drop in white voter turnout.
Last November, Obama won the votes of just 36 percent of those noncollege whites, the worst performance of any Democratic nominee among that group since Republican Ronald Reagan's 1984 landslide victory over Walter Mondale.
Some Democratic analysts have urged renewed efforts to bring working-class whites into the political fold, calling them a potential "decisive swing voter group" if minority and youth turnout level off in future elections. "In 2016 GOP messaging will be far more focused on expressing concern for `the middle class' and `average Americans,'" Andrew Levison and Ruy Teixeira wrote recently in The New Republic.
"They don't trust big government, but it doesn't mean they want no government," says Republican pollster Ed Goeas, who agrees that working-class whites will remain an important electoral group. His research found that many of them would support anti-poverty programs if focused broadly on job training and infrastructure investment. This past week, Obama pledged anew to help manufacturers bring jobs back to America and to create jobs in the energy sectors of wind, solar and natural gas.

·         15.1 Percent

The share of the population in poverty in 2010.

·         22 Percent

The percent of children under 18 in poverty.

·         46.2 Million

The number of people in poverty in 2010.

·         $22,113

The poverty threshold for a family of four.

·         3.2 Million

The number of people kept out of poverty by unemployment insurance.

·         20.3 Million

The number of people kept out of poverty by Social Security.

·         11.3 Percent,6.6 Percent, 4.5 Percent

The change in family income between 2007 and 2010 for the bottom 20 percent, middle 20 percent, and the top 20 percent, respectively.

·         $6,298

The decline in median working-age household income from 2000 to 2010.

·         $5,494

The decline in median African-American household income from 2000 to 2010.

·         $4,235

The decline in median Hispanic household income from 2000 to 2010.

·         49.1 Million

The number of people under 65 without any health insurance.

·         13.6 Million

The decline in the number of people under 65 with employer-sponsored health insurance from 2000-2010.

·         10.5 Percentage Points

The decline in the share of the under 65 population with employer-sponsored health insurance from 2000-2010.